The Value of Openness: The PatientsLikeMe Blog

Welcome to the fourth installment of our new PatientsLikeMeOnCall podcast series entitled “It’s Friday – Let’s Journal Club.”

This week’s interview is with PatientsLikeMe’s own Catherine Brownstein, PhD, MPH, who recently won a highly competitive award from the International Congress of Human Genetics (ICHG). One of our in-house Research Scientists, Dr. Brownstein captivated PatientsLikeMe headquarters last Friday with her Journal Club talk about what the ICHG award means as well as how the study of genetics can influence healthcare decisions.

Afterwards, PatientsLikeMe’s Aaron Fleishman sat down with Dr. Brownstein to learn more about how the ICHG award is selected as well as how it spotlights PatientsLikeMe’s potential as a platform for genetic discovery. Listen in below to hear what Dr. Brownstein had to say about how your genetics can affect your condition – from how you metabolize drugs to how your disease will progress.

Welcome to the third installment of our new weekly podcast series called “It’s Friday – Let’s Journal Club.”

This week’s guest interview is with Sarah Taylor, a type 1 diabetes patient, registered nurse (RN) and friend of the company. Sarah stopped by PatientsLikeMe headquarters last Friday to talk about being diagnosed with type 1 diabetes at age nine and how PatientsLikeMe has become a part of her life today.

After this engaging “Journal Club” session, PatientsLikeMe’s Aaron Fleishman sat down with Sarah to learn more about how type 1 diabetes affects her day-to-day decisions – from eating to exercising – and how as a nurse she envisions shared patient data helping medical providers. Listen in below to hear what that might look like and also what advice she has for those who are newly diagnosed with type 1 diabetes.

Last Friday we kicked off our new weekly podcast series called “It’s Friday – Let’s Journal Club.” Thanks to everyone who tuned in. This week’s guest interview is with Dr. Kevin Dykstra, PhD, who is President and CEO of qPharmetra, a pharmacometric consulting company. Dr. Dykstra stopped by PatientsLikeMe headquarters to talk to our team about the use of modeling and simulation to aid drug development.

After this insightful “Journal Club” session, PatientsLikeMe’s Aaron Fleishman sat down with Dr. Dykstra to learn more about how his team is working to measure the clinical utility of treatments in a systematic, quantitative way. Listen in to hear what exactly that involves and why Dr. Dykstra feels PatientsLikeMe is a “treasure trove of information” that is “incredibly useful” for both patients and drug developers

“I think we can see there are a lot of ways where openness can be powerful.  What’s necessary is to help facilitate openness and reduce the barriers to sharing medical information.” - Ben Heywood

PatientsLikeMe Co-Founder Ben Heywood has blogged previously about openness and sharing - and how important they are for patients. In this edition of PatientsLikeMeOnCall, he talks about the progress we’ve made in achieving openness within the healthcare industry and his vision for the expansion of the patient voice.

How can we put patients back at the center of healthcare? What barriers do we need to break through so that patients like you can openly share your health information?  Ben answers these questions and more in the fourth and final episode of our “A Look Ahead” podcast series.

Tune in to Ben’s full interview here:

Did you miss any of the first three episodes?  Find them on our blog or iTunes page.

“Social media is the canvas on which patients can really paint the entire picture of the experience they’re having with their disease and how it impacts their lives.” - David Williams

Why is it so important for patients and industry to work together?  Chief Marketing Officer and Head of Business Development David Williams tells us just that in this week’s installment of “A Look Ahead.”  We sat down to discuss the benefits of aligning patient and industry interests as well as the role that social media can play.

Among other win-win results, David shared that this alignment of interests can produce:

• Faster development of treatments and services
• Products that impact a patient’s quality of life, not just clinical outcomes
• Greater patient influence and input on industry decisions

We also talked about how social media has become a key method of interaction, allowing pharmaceutical and other healthcare companies to better understand the functional impact of a disease on everything from mental productivity to the ability to stay employed.  Patients like you discuss issues like these online every day, and if the industry is paying attention, it can lead to richer data and improved services.

What successes has PatientsLikeMe had in bringing patients and industry together?  And what kind of possibilities do we see ahead?  Tune in to David’s full interview here:

Thanks for stopping by and listening to the second podcast in the “A Look Ahead” series. Next Friday, April 1, 2011, we will be talking with Co-Founder and Chairman Jamie Heywood about the transition from drug safety to patient safety. See you then!

As you know, we like to just check in with our members to see how you’re doing as a person, not just a patient.  Today, we have a very special interview with one of our earliest members with ALS, SmoothS.  We sat down with SmoothS to talk about his recent building of the first ever ALS rehabilitation center - the Leonard Florence Center for Living, (LFCL) - which opened in November of 2010.  Along with the interview, below is a video of the grand opening event. Have a good weekend!

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	(Amy) Steve this rehab center rocks! Can you tell me what inspired you to start this project?
	(SmoothS) That easy; it is the horrible conditions in which a vented pALS is forced to live if you have no option to stay home. After my diagnosis, I was doing some research on my residential options when my care became more than my mother could handle alone. What I found was not pretty. There was nothing except for run-down nursing homes and chronic hospitals. I was discussing the problem with my friend Ron Miller and we tossed around the idea of a pALS residential co-op. I was at an ALS symposium in the spring of 2007 researching our idea when some people overhead my questions. They introduced me to Barry Berman who explained that he was considering building an ALS specialty residence with his proposed Leonard Florence Center for Living. It was important to me that an ALS Residence be fully automated and offer vent support. He agreed that it would and a beautiful relationship was born.The amazing thing is that we designed and built it in less than 3 years.
	(Amy) What was the toughest challenge in building this facility? What are you most proud of?
	(SmoothS)It has been one challenge after another but none of them proved exceptionally difficult to solve. Probably the biggest challenge was how to provide universal environmental control from a mobile wheelchair. I knew what I wanted to have but found that it didn’t exist. I found a programmer of home automation software and contracted him to build a comprehensive package based on my design. The system is now called PEAC (www.PEACpc.com) and is already being marketed to other health care facilities and we plan to also make a consumer product. I hope and expect that it will revolutionize the independence for the physically disabled.
	(Amy) At the grand opening you said that this was the first of hopefully many rehab centers that you want to be involved with, do you know where the next one is going to be?
	(SmoothS) We are having conversations with several cities such as Atlanta and Chicago. I am exploring several options to the model here but insist that any variations still be fully automated and provide vent support to anyone that needs it. I am actively marketing the project to several States and welcome any leads.
	(Amy) You are a dedicated member of the ALS community online with PatientsLikeMe and offline with the rehab center, What has that meant to you, to be involved in the lives of fo many people on and offline?
	(SmoothS) My work on the ALS Residence has been the most satisfying of my life. Obviously, because I will benefit from the project in a very personal way but I also get to help others at the same time. This would be the perfect job for me even without ALS. I get to utilize my life skills to continue being a productive and involved member of society. That is a lot more than many healthy people can say. I know that the ALS Residence Initiative keeps me focused on what I can do. Similarly, PatientsLikeMe is forum where everyone is equal. There is no disability in cyberspace. My connections to others is what keeps me going so ALSRI and PLM help me much more than I could help other people. I am happy that others may find help or inspiration in my efforts. Life is good.
	(Amy) Thanks so much for sharing, SmoothS!

Bringing the New Year in right, Benjamin Heywood, CEO of PatientsLikeMe, was interviewed by David E. Williams, publisher of the Health Business Blog (not to be confused with David S. Williams who works with PatientsLikeMe). In the interview, Ben discusses the future of the company, its ground-breaking Openness Philosophy, and the differentiation of PatientsLikeMe versus other Health 2.0 companies.

Here’s how David E. Williams characterized PatientsLikeMe:

PatientsLikeMe is one of my favorite Health 2.0, social networking websites. The online community enables patients with serious illnesses to build content-rich connections to similar patients. Patients are motivated to provide all the relevant information about themselves and to stick with the site over time to help one another. As a consequence, PatientsLikeMe users collectively generate robust data sets that have the potential to generate meaningful insights for researchers and commercial entities. That leads to some interesting business opportunities for the company.

The interview provides great insight about PatientsLikeMe. Enjoy!